Cool - in the Subscriber Downloads section of MSDN there is now a pre-built VPC of beta 2 Visual Studio, with Team System installed.

It's all trial installs (Server 2003, etc), mostly set to expire in 2006... but it's a very easy way to get some exposure to VS2005 and Team System without spending half a day loading up your own system image.

It's not that small (2.85 G) of a download, but at least you don't have to sit through 6 hours of installation prompts.

Please see the post title for details.

Well, I have only been with Intellinet for about 2 weeks now, but already I can tell that this will be a very enjoyable part of my career. The professionalism of everyone here, the positive attitudes, and certainly not least - the high quality of every consultant in the organization... it feels great being a part of that kind of a team.

Before I started, there was the occassional phone call from the recruiter (as well as others inside the organization), and the message was clear - not only was I excited to be joining the company, but the company was also excited that I was coming to join them. That was a great feeling, and one I had not experienced from an employer since... well, never.

And the welcoming attitude definately did not end when I arrived for my first day - a lot of folks seem to make a point to introduce themselves to new hires. Again - this was another first experience for me, having spent the majority of my career until now as an independant contractor.

I was also thrilled to be put out in a client environment literally on day 2 of my employment. Apparently, this is not normal procedure but there just happened to be an immediate need at a client where my particular industry background was of instant value - and I must say, it sure feels good to be useful!

Well, I won't spill any more beans about the hiring process for now - but I would like to point out that Intellinet is still hiring in Atlanta!  Now, getting past the technical and personal screenings may not be a pushover, but it is definately worth it.  We are building our practice on a solid foundation of talented people, and are most definately interested in bringing in more quality developers, BI specialists, portal specialists, and even infrastructure people.  If you are interested, please email me or pull me aside during one of the many Atlanta user group meetings - I would be more than happy to get you in touch with an Intellinet recruiter.

And supposing you do join the team, please remember to write my name down in that little "referred by" section of your application

This question occurred to me today as I sacked through YADAL (yet another data-access layer):

Does anyone else even understand transactional integrity these days?

It used to be that you didn't dare write a bit of code unless it supported at least some rudimentary transactional guarantees. But now it seems that the only transactionally-safe code I ever see "in the wild" anymore is the code I actually put out there. Countless data-access layers, monolithic systems, and even ingenius multi-tiered highly scalable systems.... but none even provide the most basic of consideration to transactions in their architecture.

I see tremendous effort made to encapsulate and abstract away the details of database access... O/R mappers, hand-rolled business classes, custom "code blowers", point-n-clicked typed datasets, pretty much everything under the sun. But pretty much never any love for SqlTransaction.

Come to think of it - this isn't a .NET problem either. I noticed the dreadful lack of transaction support even prior to .NET when I was a Delphi code jockey.

Perhaps nobody else builds applications that need to write to more than one table in a logical work unit? Nah, can't be.

Just please if you happen to run across this weblog one day and reading this,... please find out how (and why) you might need to be using transactions in your application architectures. I would like to one day encounter a custom developed application (other than my own) that actually implements transactions.

And on the other hand, hopefully you don't go to the other extreme and start peppering transaction locks all over your code "just in case"... cuz that can be an even worse situation...

Thanks, getting off the soapbox now...

If so, then you try your best to make it to the FREE Portal Development mini- Code Camp in Charlotte on August 20th.

If you were in Atlanta for the May Code Camp, you might remember Maxim Karpov [you might even have been one of the many who wrote "Maxim ROCKS" in your event survey comments]. Well, Maxim is the host for this mini- Code Camp, and on his agenda are sessions for Portal Design Patterns, Sharepoint, DotNetNuke, and ASP.NET 2.0 Portal Frameworks.

This should be a pretty good event to attend if your schedule is open, and I highly encourage everyone to attend.

Attendance IS limited, so it would be a good idea to register now and reserve your place!!

When my last cellphone died I bought a new smartphone from AT&T Wireless. I paid quite a bit for this phone, and it has worked well enough (awful reception at my home, but reasonable elsewhere). Even since Cingular acquired ATTW, I have never had any billing problems with them before... it is usually roughly $54 a month.

This week I recieved my bill for last month. It was for $257!! It seems that because the Microsoft recruiter was calling me from a land line (as opposed to a mobile line), Cingular counted every minute of those calls last month (over 400 minutes of it) as "overage", and billed me for it at $0.45 a minute.

First of all, I am almost certain that I would never have agreed to $0.45 per minute unless the carrier's policy was to allow a plan with higher limits to be applied retroactively (which is something Cingular will not do). I also do not recall signing a 3 year contract - only a 1 year contract, however I do not have paperwork to back this up so I am now at the mercy of their contract termination fee ($175 by itself). I feel like I am being robbed in broad daylight.

I am also pretty miffed that being recruited by Microsoft ended up costing me a few hundred dollars out of my own pocket.

As you can tell from my last post, I have been on the recieving end of quite a few interviews lately. But on the flip side, I have also been performing just as many interviews myself on behalf of AfterHours.

So when did I miss the big shallowing of the talent pool?

The last time I helped an employer with interviewing, there was a certain quality bar that everyone recognized. People with skills below that bar were not submitted. People above the bar were submitted for consideration - and almost always at an hourly rate that was in line with their experience level (we are talking contractors here).

This time however, I continue to be surprised - nay, astounded - at the audacity of recruiters that have been submitting resumes to us for consideration. Easily four out five have been so incredibly overinflated that once it gets to a real interview, the candidate cannot support their own resume claims. For example, I interviewed a person only a few days ago that claimed to be a "senior .NET developer" and "proficient with SQL Server". Yet this person was unable to answer correctly a single basic technical question in either subject area. I wish this were the exception, but it is seemingly the norm. I am sorry, but when a contractor is presented as "senior" with a billing rate approaching $100/hour, they had damn well be able to stand up to a basic technical interview.

I won't even talk about the cases (yes, plural) where the person being interviewed was obviously not even the same person described on the resume itself...

Now granted not all submissions have been so bad. Most from Circle Consulting and Project Solutions have been relatively solid (or at least acceptable).

Recruiters: you need to get your act together. I think you need to pass the same certifications that we (developers, architects, etc) need to pass. You need to understand the technologies so that you can adequately screen these people out before their resumes make it to us (and piss us off enough to never call on you again). I mean, isn't that YOUR JOB??

Job Seekers: Stop lying on your resumes. Dishonesty on a resume is the BEST way to ensure that you will be passed up by an employer. You might be able to bullshit your way past the recruiter's screening process, but you aren't going to make it any further than that, and you definately will not survive long once your new employer discovers that you really don't posess the skills they asked for.

OK, I have blown off enough steam for now. I know it won't make one iota of a difference, but it at least makes me feel better to shout into the \dev\null abyss...